Magnus shrugged. ‘Fucked if I know or care; perhaps King Izates has been a naughty boy. The point is that he is there and isn’t allowing anyone in or out except emissaries.’
Vespasian looked over the Parthian lines. ‘He doesn’t seem to be doing much.’
‘They’re negotiating and I think it would be best for us to slip away before they fall out with each other. There’s a river about ten miles to the south; it’s a tributary of the Tigris. Once we’re on that river we can head south.’
‘South?’
‘Yes, sir, south. There’s no way that we can cross the desert in summer by ourselves so I thought we’d head south and get some help.’
‘Help?’
‘Yes, sir, help.’
‘From whom? We’re in the Parthian Empire; who’s going to help us?’
‘That’s what I wondered and then I remembered that business in Alexandria fifteen years ago and realised that actually there is a Parthian family that could be in your debt.’
Vespasian puzzled for a few moments before that door in his memory reopened. ‘Ataphanes’ family?’
‘Exactly. You sent all his gold back to his family in Ctesiphon.’
Vespasian remembered the effort he had gone to to send his father’s freedman’s life savings back to his family. He had Alexander, the Alabarch of the Alexandrian Jews, send the gold in one of his cousin’s caravans. ‘I don’t even know if it got there.’
‘Well, there’s only one way to find out.’
‘His family might not be that well disposed towards me; after all, my family did own their son as a slave for fifteen years before giving him his freedom.’
‘Should make for an interesting meeting then.’
Vespasian was doubtful.
Magnus sighed and then pointed to the huge army. ‘If they attack, this city will fall and each one of those bastards is going to want to kill us. If they don’t attack, Izates is going to be combing the city for you so that he can tuck you up all nice and comfy back in your cell. So we’ve got to get out of here and, unless we all fancy a parched death under the desert sun to the west, then the one sensible thing to do is ask the only people we know in this whole fucking empire to help us. I don’t know if they got the gold and I don’t know if they would like to see you enslaved in revenge for what happened to their son; I don’t know any of that. What I do know is that the only way back to Rome is across the desert and this family are traders and, therefore, they have caravans; I would reckon that it’s worth asking them very nicely if they would mind us hitching a ride on one of them.’
Vespasian laughed; a strange sound in his head but a welcome one. ‘You’re right, of course, Magnus; it’s the only sensible thing to do. I don’t suppose Ataphanes’ father is still alive but I remember him saying that he was the youngest of five brothers, so there’s a fair chance of one of them still living. The question is: will they help us?’
‘No, the question is: how do we find them?’
‘His family are spice merchants so I suppose we could see if there’s a guild or some such thing in Ctesiphon and then ask if any of them know of a family that does business with the Jews of Alexandria whose fifth son became a slave in the Roman Empire.’
‘That’s not the sort of thing you publicise.’
‘Well then, how about looking for a family whose youngest son died in the service of the Great King forty years ago?’
‘Hmm, it’s a start, I suppose; but we’ve got to get there first. Hormus, trim your master’s beard and cut his hair so that it’s just off his shoulders; we’re all going to look like eastern merchants so that we have no problems walking right through that army.’
The moon set shortly after the sixth hour of the night and Magnus led them back up onto the roof. They were dressed eastern style with long tunics over trousers, leather boots, headdresses, cloaks and a sword and dagger hanging from their belts; they were the image, Hormus’ young chum had assured him, of mercantile respectability. The fires and torches in the surrounding host burned brighter and in more profusion than the stars as if the heavens had fallen to earth to encircle Arbela.
‘Down,’ Magnus hissed.
They lay low as a patrol passed along the wall.
‘There’re five an hour during the night,’ Magnus whispered to Vespasian as the patrol disappeared towards the south gate. ‘We’ve got plenty of time to get out.’ Magnus and Hormus pulled up the ladder from below and then, having checked that there were no unscheduled patrols in sight, fed it out towards the wall, bridging the gap.
Vespasian and Magnus admired the beautiful sight surrounding them, pointedly not looking back to where Hormus was saying goodbye to his lover; the youth was in tears.
‘He’s not coming with us, I take it?’ Vespasian asked.
‘Hormus wanted to bring him but he felt, to quote him directly, that you wouldn’t want your slave’s bum-boy cluttering up the boat.’
‘He said that?’
‘Yes, he’s quite perceptive.’
‘I wouldn’t have minded.’
‘Well, it’s done now; mind you, I think Hormus had his more selfish reasons. As everyone knows, the best bum-boys come from Mesopotamia; they’re renowned for being very accommodating, in more ways than one, if you take my meaning?’
Vespasian did, only too well, especially having witnessed Caligula’s public usage of one such youth. ‘So you think he’s planning on testing the truth of that assertion?’
‘I’d have thought so; definitely. I’ve been with him almost all the time these last couple of years and I have to say that I really like the lad. However, he’s got one weakness: he does love a boy or two; mad for them he is. It’ll get him into trouble one day.’
Hormus disentangled himself from his latest passion and joined Vespasian and Magnus by the temporary bridge. The youth, with tears glinting in his eyes from the speckled light of the thousands of fires out on the plain, held the ladder firm as Hormus crossed first, with care, balancing a sack on his shoulders. Magnus followed and then Vespasian, trying his hardest not to look down into the dark void of the street below. Once they were all over, the youth withdrew the ladder and watched his lover disappear along the wall. Vespasian noticed that Hormus did not look back once.
They scuttled along, keeping low for about twenty paces before Hormus stopped next to an iron ring set in the wall and rummaged in the bag. Bringing out a long length of rope, he quickly knotted it around the ring and threw the end over the wall. Vespasian was finding it hard to believe that this was the same timid man who was rarely able to look anyone in the eye. With a testing pull on the knot he stepped back and indicated to Vespasian to go first.
As he heaved himself over the parapet, clinging onto the rope, voices came from further along the wall, near the south gate.
‘Fast as you like, sir,’ Magnus hissed, ‘that’s the next patrol on the way; they’re early.’
With a muttered profanity, Vespasian braced his feet against the outside of the wall and pushed, throwing his body out while letting the rope slip through his hands so that he descended the fifty feet in a series of jumps with his cloak flapping up and down behind him like a bird’s broken wing. Hormus was already on the rope when Vespasian landed at the base of the wall, jolting his knees, but thankful that he had built his body up to reasonable fitness during the last stretch of his incarceration. He was standing on a narrow ridge looking down the exceedingly steep slope of the hill that the city sat upon, one hundred feet down to the plain.
Shouts from above rang out and, looking up, Vespasian saw Magnus fling himself over the wall while Hormus was still only halfway down. The rope swung alarmingly from the extra weight on it and Hormus was having difficulty clinging on as Magnus came tearing down; but suddenly clinging on was academic: the rope was no longer attached. Hormus fell the last ten feet, managing to land upright and then roll with the impact; but Magnus had further to fall, much further.